1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a heat treatment apparatus for heating a thin plate-like precision electronic substrate such as a semiconductor wafer and a glass substrate for a liquid crystal display device (hereinafter referred to simply as a “substrate”) by irradiating the substrate with a flash of light.
2. Description of the Background Art
In the process of manufacturing a semiconductor device, impurity doping is an essential step for forming a pn junction in a semiconductor wafer. At present, it is common practice to perform impurity doping by an ion implantation process and a subsequent annealing process. The ion implantation process is a technique for causing ions of impurity elements such as boron (B), arsenic (As) and phosphorus (P) to collide against the semiconductor wafer with high acceleration voltage, thereby physically implanting the impurities into the semiconductor wafer. The implanted impurities are activated by the subsequent annealing process. When annealing time in this annealing process is approximately several seconds or longer, the implanted impurities are deeply diffused by heat. This results in a junction depth much greater than a required depth, which might constitute a hindrance to good device formation.
In recent years, attention has been given to flash lamp annealing (FLA) that is an annealing technique for heating a semiconductor wafer in an extremely short time. The flash lamp annealing is a heat treatment technique in which xenon flash lamps (the term “flash lamp” as used hereinafter refers to a “xenon flash lamp”) are used to irradiate a surface of a semiconductor wafer with a flash of light, thereby raising the temperature of only the surface of the semiconductor wafer implanted with impurities in an extremely short time (several milliseconds or less).
The xenon flash lamps have a spectral distribution of radiation ranging from ultraviolet to near-infrared regions. The wavelength of light emitted from the xenon flash lamps is shorter than that of light emitted from conventional halogen lamps, and approximately coincides with a fundamental absorption band of a silicon semiconductor wafer. Thus, when a semiconductor wafer is irradiated with a flash of light emitted from the xenon flash lamps, the temperature of the semiconductor wafer can be raised rapidly, with only a small amount of light transmitted through the semiconductor wafer. Also, it has turned out that flash irradiation, that is, the irradiation of a semiconductor wafer with a flash of light in an extremely short time of several milliseconds or less allows a selective temperature rise only near the surface of the semiconductor wafer. Therefore, the temperature rise in an extremely short time with the xenon flash lamps allows only the activation of impurities to be achieved without deep diffusion of the impurities.
A heat treatment apparatus which employs such xenon flash lamps is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0175605 in which flash lamps are disposed on the front surface side of a semiconductor wafer and halogen lamps are disposed on the back surface side thereof so that a desired heat treatment is performed using a combination of these lamps. In the heat treatment apparatus disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0175605, a semiconductor wafer held on a susceptor is preheated to a certain degree of temperature by the halogen lamps. Thereafter, the temperature of the semiconductor wafer is raised to a desired treatment temperature by flash irradiation from the flash lamps.
The heat treatment apparatus disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0175605 includes a quartz plate for holding a semiconductor wafer during the flash irradiation. The quartz plate has an opening provided for a radiation therometer to measure the temperature of the semiconductor wafer therethrough. The temperature of the semiconductor wafer during the preheating is lower in a region lying immediately over the opening than in other regions. Also, the decrease in temperature is prone to occur in a peripheral portion of the semiconductor wafer during the preheating using the halogen lamps. As a result of these facts, a problem has arisen in which the in-plane temperature distribution of the semiconductor wafer is nonuniform during the flash irradiation.
In the heat treatment apparatus as disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0175605, preheating prior to flash heating is performed by irradiating a semiconductor wafer held on a susceptor made of quartz with halogen light from the halogen lamps. When the temperature of the semiconductor wafer is increased during the preheating, the temperature of the susceptor that holds the semiconductor wafer does not increase so much because quartz allows halogen light to pass therethrough. This causes variations in temperature distribution such that the temperature of the semiconductor wafer is decreased, in particular, near a portion thereof in contact with the susceptor and in a peripheral portion thereof.
To prevent such variations, it is contemplated that a temperature equalizing ring made of, for example, silicon carbide the temperature of which is increased by absorbing halogen light is used to support a semiconductor wafer. However, if the temperature equalizing ring made of silicon carbide is used in a flash lamp annealer, only the front surface of the temperature equalizing ring is heated by the flash irradiation, so that the temperature of the front surface of the temperature equalizing ring increases abruptly. The thermal expansion of the front surface of the semiconductor wafer at that time causes warpage to occur, resulting in vibrations of the temperature equalizing ring. When the energy of a flash of light for irradiation is increased, the temperature equalizing ring vibrates violently to jump up in some cases. The vibrations and jumping of the temperature equalizing ring give rise to problems in which particles are created by the sliding movement of the temperature equalizing ring on a semiconductor wafer and in a chamber and in which the temperature equalizing ring can no longer hold a semiconductor wafer because of the misregistration thereof.